Here we go again. There may be election problems in November.

A high turn out. New voting machines. Bad experience with paper ballots. The perfect storm is beginning to brew — even right here in Maryland. Can it be stopped?

The New York Times reports this morning:

With millions of new voters heading to the polls this November and many states introducing new voting technologies, election officials and voting monitors say they fear the combination is likely to create long lines, stressed-out poll workers and late tallies on Election Day.

Awesome. Ready to vote, everyone?

They report that about 1 out of every 5 states will use new equipment, mainly making the switch to paper ballots with optical scans.

Maryland has its own history of voting problems. Two years ago, increased demand for absentee ballots (click) created panic about a shortage when Maryland hadn’t printed up enough (click). The boosted demand came, in large part, because of Maryland’s switch to Diebold touchscreen machines. Maryland politicians encouraged people to vote by absentee ballot because of concerns that the machines wouldn’t record votes accurately.

On the national level, let’s not forget about problems out in Los Angeles County this year. That’s where more than 10,000 votes were lost because of ballot design problems (click). That came on the heels of problems in Sarasota County, Fla. Nearly 20,000 ballots were lost in a Congressional race there because the touchscreen machines didn’t record the votes (click).

And those are just the voting machines. With a black man running for president, you’ve got to wonder whether our nation’s dirty habit of disenfranchising black voters will continue (click).

Here’s my question. How much confidence do you have in the November election?

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